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crathwell42 's review for:
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
by Hallie Rubenhold
With titles that range from serious historical or criminology research to apocryphal fakes, few murderers have invoked fear, horror, and cemented a time period (and it’s morals) as much as the alias, Jack the Ripper.
In the realm of “Ripperology” not a single title has done the depth of research into the Ripper’s victims the way Hallie Rubenhold has in her book, “The Five: the lives of Jack the Ripper’s Women”.
Described as “long overdue” Rubenhold combs through census documents, newspapers, city and municipal archives, police reports, coroner reports, inquests, witness testimony, and countless histories on Jack the Ripper and Victorian social lives and customs in order to give a voice back to the canonical 5 women - Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elisabeth Stride, Kate Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly - who who were killed in Whitechaple in 1888.
Turning away from all the theories on who the murderer may or may not have been, the gore of the women’s violent deaths, and the attraction of Jack the Ripper, Rubenhold manages two things. A social history of workhouses, brothels, poverty, and slums as well as a feminist history of the time.
The care and exactitude in the matters of these women, and the abject refusal to accept that they were “only prostitutes”, restores dignity and humanity to them. While doing so, it also exposes the misogyny that has for so long been the engine of the Ripper myth.
Prostitution, the common descriptor for these women, is the one thing these women did not have in common. As Rubenhold shows, only two of them were ever paid for sex or were known by police to solicit. Only one of those two self described as a prostitute. What they did have in common was that they were poor to the point of destitute and thus, largely invisible to the world around them.
All of these stories are profoundly, heart achingly sad. Showing how thin the line was, and still is, when it comes to poverty. The stresses of living pay day to pay day, and how the hypocritical double standard around sex is just as alive today. Show best in how the judge had to instruct the jury in the trial of Peter Sutcliffe to look beyond his victims actions and addictions in order to render a verdict on his actions. Or of course, the miscarriage of justice with the trial and sentencing of Brock Turner.
In the realm of “Ripperology” not a single title has done the depth of research into the Ripper’s victims the way Hallie Rubenhold has in her book, “The Five: the lives of Jack the Ripper’s Women”.
Described as “long overdue” Rubenhold combs through census documents, newspapers, city and municipal archives, police reports, coroner reports, inquests, witness testimony, and countless histories on Jack the Ripper and Victorian social lives and customs in order to give a voice back to the canonical 5 women - Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elisabeth Stride, Kate Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly - who who were killed in Whitechaple in 1888.
Turning away from all the theories on who the murderer may or may not have been, the gore of the women’s violent deaths, and the attraction of Jack the Ripper, Rubenhold manages two things. A social history of workhouses, brothels, poverty, and slums as well as a feminist history of the time.
The care and exactitude in the matters of these women, and the abject refusal to accept that they were “only prostitutes”, restores dignity and humanity to them. While doing so, it also exposes the misogyny that has for so long been the engine of the Ripper myth.
Prostitution, the common descriptor for these women, is the one thing these women did not have in common. As Rubenhold shows, only two of them were ever paid for sex or were known by police to solicit. Only one of those two self described as a prostitute. What they did have in common was that they were poor to the point of destitute and thus, largely invisible to the world around them.
All of these stories are profoundly, heart achingly sad. Showing how thin the line was, and still is, when it comes to poverty. The stresses of living pay day to pay day, and how the hypocritical double standard around sex is just as alive today. Show best in how the judge had to instruct the jury in the trial of Peter Sutcliffe to look beyond his victims actions and addictions in order to render a verdict on his actions. Or of course, the miscarriage of justice with the trial and sentencing of Brock Turner.